Tag Archives: Bicycle Facilities

Brenda Miller, San Clemente’s untiring bike advoc, posted this last night and we reprint it verbatim:
Great news to share: the Orange Section of the American Planning Association has awarded the City of San Clemente the top prize in transportation planning in recognition of our new Mobility and Complete Streets Element / Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. [You can read it yourself, here.]

2014 is the first year the Orange Section has recognized transportation planning, so San Clemente’s vision has, once again, made history: we’re the first ever in OC to receive the award.

The panel of jurors complimented San Clemente with some pretty awesome language in their letter: “This Plan fulfills all of the criteria for this award: planning and innovation, compatibility, engagement, effectiveness and results . . . ” They called our vision for the future “exceptional.” The judges have also endorsed the Plan for consideration at the State of California award level. So stay tuned!

Notably, the judges also recognized our inclusion of multi-modal level of service in the Plan: “We were also impressed with the innovation to evaluate transportation system performance in terms that go beyond level of service for automobile travel to account for non-motorized and transit modes of moving people . . . [t]his innovation is established as a General Plan Mobility and Complete Streets Element policy that recognizes there needs to be more research and experimentation to identify appropriate new performance metrics.”

As many of you know, I’ve long advocated for multimodal level of service as the key to efficient transportation networks (& the use of taxpayer dollars to fund them). But MMLOS is also key to transportation equity: we should all be able to safely get where we want to go based on our own freedom to choose the mode of travel that suits us best.

Personally, I am not only honored with the APA’s recognition of our Mobility Plan, but also to have collaborated with San Clemente’s planners, engineers, consultants KTU+A, City Council, City Manager, General Plan Advisory Committee, and Planning Commission. Our Mobility Element was a (6-year) team effort extraordinaire, from concept to completion.

To those who inspired us: thank you. To those we hope to inspire: dream big–there’s no such thing as can’t!